Less is more: Spectres of scarcity and the politics of resource access in the upstream oil sector

Our objective in this paper is to understand the significance of the peak oil claim for the large, publicly-traded oil companies to whom the tasks of finding oil, extracting it and delivering it to market have been allocated. On the face of it, peak oil would appear to offer the ultimate solution to a problem that has plagued the international oil industry for the last one hundred years: how to organise scarcity in the face of prodigious abundance. We examine how publicly-traded oil firms (‘Big Oil’) are engaging with the discourse and science of peak oil, and find that peak oil positions firms like Exxon, BP and Shell in a number of different and quite complex ways: as a beneficiary (of a higher price regime), but also as a victim (of shrinking reserves) and a suspect (for under-investing in exploration or exploiting reserves too rapidly). We find a surprising lack of consensus among Big Oil about the significance of peak oil’s core claim for an imminent, permanent decline in the production of conventional grades of crude, and we conclude that peak oil is not regarded as strategic priority for oil producers (the contrast here with climate change is instructive). To understand why this is the case we turn from the physical science-based account of peak oil to political economy, and examine the contradictory character of Big Oil’s current position. We show how the strong financial returns to Big Oil in the last few years mask a precarious structural position when it comes to reserves access and reserves replacement. Critically the origins of this squeeze originate primarily above-ground: in the ownership of reserves, the politics of resource access and the changing structure of the international oil industry, and not below-ground in geological limits. Accordingly, we reject the simple assumption that increasing geological scarcity explains/justifies high returns, and argue that the relative marginalisation of peak oil within Big Oil’s strategic concerns reflects the way it misdiagnoses the cause of oil companies’ woes when it comes to finding and replacing reserves. We conclude that peak oil’s claim of physically-induced scarcity obfuscates rather than illuminates when it comes to understanding the opportunities for - and constraints on - accumulation in the upstream oil sector.     

At the base of Hubbert’s Peak: Grounding the debate on petroleum scarcity

M. King Hubbert’s 1956 prediction of a ‘peak’ in US oil production has spurred a durable and divisive debate on the exhaustion of the petroleum resource. Pitting physical against economic explanations of resource scarcity, the peak oil debate has seemingly sunk into the well-worn grooves of a long history of scarcity debates. Yet, as this paper argues, this ‘stale dichotomy’ can partly be attributed to a severance from the contexts and ideas that informed Hubbert’s mathematical calculations. Specifically, this paper examines the broader influences on the peak oil model: Hubbert’s career in the newly formed field of geophysics; his personal concern with the relationship between energy and population growth; and his ties to Technocracy, Inc., a social movement originating in the US that aimed to replace political and business control with a group of specialist engineers and technicians. The paper further emphasizes the importance of institutional and political interests to the arguments launched against Hubbert, and in motivating change in this opposition over time. Last, it makes the case that the contemporary de-contextualization of Hubbert’s model has contributed towards a narrow focus of discussions within the oil industry and in certain governments on predicting the timing of a global peak, without addressing the wider questions implied by Hubbert’s model.     

Geographies of peak oil: The other carbon problem

This extended editorial introduction to a themed issue of Geoforum on geographies of peak oil has three objectives. First, it provides a concise account of the ’peak oil’ claim, identifying the key protagonists in the debate, and outlining different stances with regard to the timing, shape and composition (conventional vs. non-conventional hydrocarbons) of the peak. Second, after briefly characterising the limited engagement with peak oil by human geographers, it offers a provisional set of claims about what a geographical analysis of peak oil might yield. Finally, it introduces each of the papers and, in doing so, makes the case for a fuller and more sustained engagement by geography with this ’other carbon problem.’     

Slowing things down: Lessons from the GM controversy

This paper stages an encounter between one strand of the controversy around genetically modified food crops and some conceptual resources from the field of science and technology studies, with the aim of illuminating the relationship between science and politics. Contrary to some suggestions, it is argued that the spatial, temporal and material imagination encapsulated in the figure of Progress remains central to their contemporary articulation. Best described as an ‘anti-political’ strategy, Progress does not leave room for anything else but one story of the world. Through following the attempts of both scientists in the field and protestors on the streets to make public some of the trajectories which this story leaves out, what emerges is the possibility of an alternative to Progress that is not based simply on its rejection. Instead, such efforts offer resources for inventing another way of collectively going forward which chime with some more theoretical attempts to elaborate how things might be productively ‘slowed down’. An example of how government was forced to construct a way of dealing with things that is more adequate and appropriate to life in a full world is compared with Bruno Latour’s model of due process for nonhumans, before some conclusions are drawn about whether we should be depressed or hopeful about our ability to move on in the lights of such attempts.     

Text, talk, things, and the subpolitics of performing place

This article tells the story of how a group of Dutch and Belgian citizens organized themselves to promote an area that they valued, to put it on the map, to raise awareness about its qualities, and to protect it from urban and industrial development. Our theoretical perspective focuses on the performative and political aspects of this place-making process and the discursive and material practices involved. We connect this to Beck’s concept of subpolitics.Our findings show how the group performed this place not only through text and talk - giving the area a name, using their knowledge and expertise to raise awareness about its values, lobbying and cooperating with decision-makers -, but also through things - installing art objects and information signs that articulate certain characteristics and values of the area. Our findings demonstrate the struggles involved in these performances. The group involved multiple perspectives on what the important values and characteristics of the area are and on what strategies would work best in trying to influence decision-making and protect the area. However, the use of expertise as the main strategy to gain influence excluded the more critical and activist strategies and privileging archaeological and historical values and characteristics came at the expense of attention on agricultural and natural values.Our findings make clear that performing place cannot be taken to be homogeneous and that it inevitably involves multiple perspectives and demands. The struggles, power relations and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that this multiplicity implicates reveal a form of sub-politics that involves both politicization and depoliticization. Also, it is a form of subpolitics that is more diverse and ambiguous than Beck’s conceptualization presupposes by its emphasis on the role of outsiders as a homogeneous group.     

Oil ‘futures’: Shell’s Scenarios and the social constitution of the global oil market

This article explores the relationship between the oil industry’s representation of operating conditions in key sites of extraction and the constitution of oil futures markets. An analysis of Shell Oil’s recent Scenarios publications, the ‘Trilemma Scenarios to 2025’ and subsequent ‘Scramble and Blueprints Scenarios to 2050’, provides insight into both the (global) social construction of oil prices and the oil industry’s reaction to social resistance in its operating environment - whether in the form of movements for resource sovereignty or climate change activism. Examining the implications of these two Scenario publications for key sites of Shell investment, the Nigerian Niger Delta and the Canadian Tar Sands, the article demonstrates that understanding the discursive implications of ‘peak oil’ for the petroleum industry requires contextualizing discussions of ‘scarcity’ within business agents role in shaping oil futures markets, and private industry’s interest in the ongoing development of unconventional fossil fuel sources. While the role of deregulated futures trading receives little attention in the Shell Scenarios, speculative trading - and thus perception concerning supply among business agents - is central to shaping global oil prices and thus the social conditions of the oil market.     

‘Through children’s eyes’: childhood, place and the fear of crime

This article seeks to bring young respondents more sharply into focus by considering fear of crime ‘through children’s eyes’. By incorporating children’s perspectives it is argued that more inclusive and integrative community safety initiatives may arise. Inspired by the recent flowering of research undertaken in childhood studies by social and cultural geographers, the study seeks to make a theoretical, empirical and spatial contribution to debates in the field. Based on the findings of a large-scale school survey, the responses indicate that children have an acute place-based sensitivity to a range of highly relevant community safety issues. This includes detailed reflections concerning the place of policing, boredom, youth gangs, motorcars and drugs in their neighbourhoods. It is suggested that the inclusion of children’s accounts into geographical debates not only enriches our knowledge of childhood studies, but also adds detail and texture to our understandings of fear of crime.     

Exporting the Saemaul spirit: South Korea’s Knowledge Sharing Program and the ‘rendering technical’ of Korean development

This article provides a critical intervention into South Korea’s recent effort to promote its 1970s authoritarian-era rural modernization program, Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), as the ‘iconic’ model of its international development assistance. To better understand how this movement has been represented, this article examines the policy narratives that have been produced by the Korean government’s Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP) and circulated through multiple development cooperation initiatives. These narratives portray Saemaul as the key to Korea’s developmental success: a mental revolution in values that inculcated the ‘can-do’ spirit in poor rural villagers and allowed them to escape poverty and stagnation. We argue that the emphasis of this narrative on the spiritual, voluntary, and value-oriented nature of the movement has been used to ‘render technical’ Korea’s development experience: i.e. to reduce it to a question of how development experts successfully cultivated the spirit of development in the Korean people and, by extension, how developing countries might do the same. We show how this narrative neglects the contested history and Cold War context of Saemaul, raising questions about the ‘brand’ of development assistance that has been built upon it.     

Market triumphalism and the CBNRM ‘crises’ at the South African section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Transfrontier conservation has taken Southern Africa by storm, where the modus operandi remains simple and intuitive: by dissolving boundaries, local benefits grow as conservation and development spread regionally. However, in the case of South Africa’s section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, political and economic change redirects benefits to support ‘modern’ economies at the expense of rural livelihoods through community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Neo-liberal agendas promoted by government and the transfrontier park derail efforts at decentralizing CBNRM initiatives beyond markets and state control. This paper argues that ‘hybrid neoliberal’ CBNRM has arisen in private and public sector delivery of devolved conservation and poverty relief projects as ‘tertiary production’ for regional development. As a result, ‘CBNRM’ projects related to and independent of transfrontier conservation support private sector interests rather than the resource base of rural livelihoods. Concluding sections assert that CBNRM can counter this neoliberal trend by supporting the land-based economy of local users living near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.     

Enacting things through numbers: Taking nature into account/ing

In this article I make use of a combination of actor-network-theory, governmentality studies and feminist studies of science to show how nature is done or enacted within politics and administration. In particular I show how it relates to the theories and practices of economics and accounting. I explore the process by which the ‘critical limits’ of nature under the impact of acidification was created as a part of the politics and negotiations about acid rain. I demonstrate that even though the outcome was not ‘Nature’ as such, understood as a form of moral high-ground, the effect of this process was to produce ‘a nature as a whole’, in a process of unification. This I argue can only be understood relationally: ‘Nature’ is taken into account by way of accounting. In doing this I engage with Latour’s work on the politics of Nature and argue that nature is not necessarily such a deadly tool to politics as is sometimes taken for granted. Before we throw Nature out with our empirical studies of sciences, natures and politics, in the plural, we need to look first at how Nature-wholes emerge, are enacted, and take part in politics.     

Travelling technocrats, embodied knowledges: Globalising privatisation in telecoms and water

The decade from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s was a key moment in the unfolding of the global privatisation agenda. During this decade privatisation shifted from a nation-state project to become part of the structural adjustment measures associated with economic globalisation. These measures were not only promoted by international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, but by a range of other organisations and actors who have received little attention. In particular, virtually no attention has been paid to the mid-level technocrats who enacted privatisation strategies and techniques. This paper focuses on these actors through the cases of New Zealand telecommunications engineers and British water engineers. In discussing the significance of these actors we argue for the unpacking of the messy histories, geographies and sociologies of privatisation using both publicly available documents and ethnographic methods. This will allow us to understand why certain courses of action were pursued in particular times and places, why other actions dropped out, and will reveal more about the national imaginaries and embodied knowledges underpinning the globalisation of privatisation.     

Caring about ‘brain drain’ migration in a postcolonial world

The migration of health professionals has been accompanied by politically and morally charged discussions on the effect of such migration on the health of those left behind in their countries of origin. In the UK, the National Health Service, which has long been dependent on overseas migrants to bolster its own staffing, has responded to critics accusing it of ‘poaching’ health professionals from poorer countries with a range of measures to limit health worker mobility. These measures counterpose the right to mobility of health workers with the right to health for those they leave behind, posing academics working on brain drain with a quandary: how do we think ethically about brain drain migration? This paper aims to address this question by exploring the spatial and temporal ontologies that are being mobilised in current thinking around the brain drain. It explores how these ontologies shape both public debates and policy initiatives, foreclosing other ways of thinking about health worker mobility. It argues that routing discourses of brain drain through insights drawn from care ethics and postcolonial thinking will highlight the historical transnational connections that mark medical labour markets and how the category ‘medical worker’ is precisely dependent on this transnationalism.     

Everywhere different? Globalisation and the impact of international migration on Sydney and Melbourne

Using a new approach to classifying migrant group concentrations, we test for evidence of the effects of globalisation, associated by some with ‘protopostmodernity’, on two Australian cities. Sydney is characterised as an emergent world city and a focus of ‘new economy’ activities. Melbourne is associated with ‘old economy’ activities, dominated by manufacturing. In the Australian context, the onset of globalisation also coincided with significant changes to immigration policy: the end of a ‘white Australia’ policy in the early 1970s in favour of a skills-based policy, regardless of race or ethnicity. We argue that the evidence of the spatial behaviour of ethnic groups for these two cities highlights the essential continuity of ethnic segregation and spatial assimilation processes in two cities where segregation levels and experience are fundamentally different from many overseas examples. We further argue for a need to recognise that context, and the ethnic experience, are everywhere different, both intra- and internationally.     

Spatial characterization of the location of potentially leaky wells penetrating a deep saline aquifer in a mature sedimentary basin

This work was motivated by considerations of potential leakage pathways for CO₂ injected into deep geological formations for the purpose of carbon sequestration. Because existing wells represent a potentially important leakage pathway, a spatial analysis of wells that penetrate a deep aquifer in the Alberta Basin was performed and various statistical measures to quantify the spatial distribution of these wells were presented. The data indicate spatial clustering of wells, due to oil and gas production activities. The data also indicate that the number of wells that could be impacted by CO₂ injection, as defined by the spread of an injected CO₂ plume, varies from several hundred in high well-density areas to about 20 in low-density areas. These results may be applied to other mature continental sedimentary basins in North America and elsewhere, where detailed information on well location and status may not be available.     

“I’m an imaginary figure”: Unravelling the mobility and marginalisation of Scottish Gypsy Travellers

Gypsy Travellers have a long history of marginalisation in Scotland, but their mobility remains an issue of particular contention. Drawing upon a series of interviews with Gypsy Travellers in the North-East of Scotland, this paper uncovers how power and politics permeate discourses on movement to legitimise the spatial ordering of this traditionally nomadic group. The paper begins by exploring the more hidden and subtle aspects of mobility, such as the emotional and imaginative ties to travel. It then shifts to document how Gypsy Travellers’ geographies have been compromised by discriminatory policies and practices, which demonstrate a misunderstanding of the heterogeneity of their mobility. Consequently, increasingly punitive policies have pushed many Gypsy Travellers to abandon their travelling ways to move into “fixed” housing, while others have been forced into states of perpetual motion. The overall goal of the paper is to unravel the discursive constructions of movement in the context of institutionalised power and to document the spatial ordering of Gypsy Travellers’ lives, whose marginality has been legitimised by laws, ideologically sustained and reproduced in policy documents.     

Geographies of security and statehood in Norway’s ‘Battle of the North’

In this paper, we explore how ‘peak oil’ anxieties are woven into the spaces and practices of the state in Norway and the consequences of this for environmental justice and the public sphere more widely. We focus in particular on an ongoing struggle over access to hydrocarbon deposits in the Norwegian Arctic, the so-called ‘Battle of the North’. We use this dispute to highlight three wider theoretical points regarding (i) the continuing relevance of the state in the governing of nature-society relations, (ii) the increasingly fragmented and fluid nature of state space, and (iii) the significance of ‘security’ as a term around which social, economic and environmental tensions pivot. The paper concludes by reflecting on current efforts to prevent new oil activities in the north of Norway.     

Eco-localisation as a progressive response to peak oil and climate change - A sympathetic critique

This paper critically but sympathetically examines eco-localisation as a response to ‘peak oil’ and to reduce the emission of CO₂ to avoid dangerous climate change. Rather than seeing the politics of climate change and peak oil as in some way ‘post-political’, the paper argues that protagonists of localised economies are developing radical new conceptions of livelihood and economy that directly cut against the logic of growth-based capitalist economic strategies and elite conceptualisations of economic development. Building on development theory, the paper develops a conceptualisation of ‘immanent’ and ‘intentional’ localisation, with the former a simple move by businesses of economic activities that have high transport costs closer to their markets. Advocates of intentional localisation are working more pro actively at grassroots level to develop local solutions to peak oil and climate change based on developing less resource-intensive yet enjoyable and fulfilling livelihoods in more localised economies. In discussing the contested nature of localisation, the paper engages with critiques of eco-localisation from neoliberal advocates and from the left, before concluding that localisation should be seen more as a different calculation of where economic activities would be located, which aims to reduce oil consumption and CO₂ emissions, rather than a call for autarky. The paper concludes by arguing that analyses of the scale of economic networks need to pay more attention of the materiality of oil consumption and CO₂ emissions, and that scales cannot be seen as socially constructed.     

Network configurations and R&D activities of the ICT industry in Suzhou municipality, China

This paper analyzes the network structure and R&D activities of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou municipality, known previously for its local state-directed Sunan model of development. Suzhou, however, has been undergoing dramatic restructuring to remake itself into a globalizing production center. We highlight the significance of the Chinese state and local/regional assets in shaping the trajectories of globalization and regional development, and the increasing importance of domestic markets and regional clusters/agglomeration for foreign ventures. We have found that Suzhou’s development path, heavily dependent on external forces, has made Suzhou a TNC (transnational corporation) satellite district. We also find that the ICT industry in Suzhou has a dual-structure, segmented between foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and domestic firms. TNCs tend to network among themselves and their interfirm networks are increasingly domestic and regionally embedded in the Yangtze River Delta, while the linkages between TNCs and local firms are weak. We argue that there is a series of technological, structural, spatial, and institutional “mismatches” that limits the establishment of “global pipelines” of knowledge exchange. We hold that the nature of global-local networks is contingent upon regional endogenous capacities and the specific ways in which global capital interacts with local institutions. Therefore, perspectives on TNCs’ local embeddedness must be positioned in their regional/external networks. We also analyze the constraints placed on Suzhou’s development into an innovative city and promote the integration of global and local/regional assets through development of indigenous capacities.     

柔性桩复合地基承载力数值计算

利用ANSYS有限元软件对柔性桩单（多）桩复合地基的承载力进行了数值计算,考虑的因素有：荷载、置换率、桩长径比和桩距,研究结果表明：随着荷载桩和长径比的增加,柔性桩单桩复合地基的桩身轴向应力峰值基本出现在距桩顶0.1倍左右桩长处,两者的变化均导致桩、土沉降有相同变化趋势;置换率的增加会导致桩承担更多荷载,但桩-土沉降变化趋势相反,不利于柔性桩复合地基的共同沉降;荷载和桩长径比对柔性桩多桩复合地基桩体承担的荷载贡献不大,但会导致桩-土有共同的变化趋势;桩距的变化能够导致柔性桩桩体承担的荷载有较大范围的变化,桩间土沉降较之桩沉降趋势更为明显,对柔性桩复合地基承载特性有一定的影响。     

Making Alzheimer’s disease matter. Enacting, interfering and doing politics of nature

This article contributes to recent discussions about the politics of nature by exploring how Alzheimer’s disease is being shaped as a ‘matter of concern’. Drawing on work on differences in medicine from science and technology studies, and from the geographies of naturecultures, it explores the ‘mattering’ of this disease in a number of locations including: an international Alzheimer’s patients’ movement; a medical textbook; laboratory science; daily care practice; an advertisement for anti-dementia medication; general practice; parliamentary politics; and a conference on dementia. It explores how these locations interfere and co-exist with one another and argues against the ‘science centrism’ of science and technology studies which contributes to the dominance of science and medicine by granting these analytical privilege. The same problem is posed in the recent STS turn from science to politics - the danger is that politics is similarly privileged.